Canada

Socialist Alternative Vancouver voted unanimously to support Jean Swanson’s election campaign for the City Council by-election on October 14. Jean, running as an independent, has already gained wide support in her drive to bring a political revolution to Vancouver city hall. She is a tireless campaigner fighting for over 40 years against poverty, and for […]

Since July 27, 700 members of Teamsters Local 419 have been on strike at Toronto’s Pearson International airport. They are in dispute with Swissport, which services some 30 airlines including Air Transat, British Airways and Sunwing. The workers are baggage handlers, cargo handlers, cabin cleaners and other ground staff, and they also tow airplanes. The workers voted […]

Housing, whether renting or buying, in Vancouver and Toronto, is among the most expensive in the world. Having an affordable roof over their heads remains a pipedream for many of the nearly 10 million people that call these two regions home. The high cost of housing is fuelled by a worldwide bubble of speculative money […]

Socialist Alternative Canada has published a new pamphlet. Canadian Perspectives: 150 years of the Canadian State: Capitalism, Colonialism, Corruption and Resistance Canada Today and Looking Ahead A pdf is available here If you are interested in what we say, contact Socialist Alternative about joining: contact@socialistalternative.ca If you can afford a donation towards the costs, please […]

In May, the Ontario government, to the surprise of many, announced its plan to introduce a $15 an hour minimum wage, beginning with $14 in January 2017 and reaching the full $15 the following year. Given that the existing minimum is $11.75 and that the implementation time to a full 15 is one of the […]

The decision by the Quebec leftist independence party Québec Solidaire (QS) to refuse an electoral pact with the Parti Québécois (PQ) at its 12th congress on May 21, has set off a local media storm against QS, with the leader of the PQ, Jean-François Lisée, leading the charge, accusing QS of putting its interests first […]

Big business is increasingly taking over the housing sector – social rented as well as private ownership. The results have been devastating as tenants face sky-high rents, fewer rights, worsening conditions, and government policies of aggressive deregulation. This article reviews two books linking the current housing crisis with globalisation and the financial markets. The Financialisation […]

After a week of the strike, the Québec Liberals legislated the workers back to work. Engineers employed by the province also had been on strike for three weeks. An open-ended general strike all across Québec began in the construction industry on Wednesday. The main issues in the dispute are about work schedules and overtime. Workers […]

In the 117 months that Harper was Prime Minister, not a single major tars sands pipeline was approved. In just 13 months, Trudeau approved two major pipelines, Kinder Morgan’s line to Vancouver and Enbridge’s line to Lake Superior. These two pipelines will add more than double BC’s current annual total release of CO2 to the […]

To mark 150 years of the Canadian state, we are publishing some of the articles from our magazine that covered different parts of Canada’s history. Stephen Harper’s claim in 2009, that Canada has “no history of colonialism” shows either he is ignorant or a liar. Canada, founded in 1867, is and was a colonial and […]